Australia’s Wet Tropics

By headlamp, candle, and laptop monitor, field biologists process transect samples, in Australia’s wet tropics–the last shreds of rain forest (and rain forest creatures) on the Australian continent.

The species that live in this mountainous area along the northwest coast, are endemic, which means they exist nowhere else in the world: flamboyant tropical birds, lizards, frogs, possums–even a kangaroo that lives in trees.

Rising global temperatures, if they get too high, will likely drive many of these species to extinction.

I visited northeast Australia as part of an hour-long documentary on global climate change and evolution I produced for a series called the DNA Files. Listen here:

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And meet the leaf-tail gecko, whose color and texture allows it to blend in to tree trunks. Even its eyes are camouflaged…

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From the moment….

..he heard the vigorous pounding of his mother's heart, Adam Burke has been attuned to the world of sound. (Of course, the glory of light has been equally impossible to overlook.) Bt sounds...sounds! Formal ear-training started at the age of three with Suzuki violin and Orff method. Gadgetry and studio production followed, years later, when he studied electronic music composition in college. During the in-betweens, writing and storytelling sealed the deal....Adam roams the world gathering sound and and sight and stories.